The Future Of Video Content (And Why You Need To Get Ahead Of It)

In 2014, content marketers found themselves admiring an unlikely new hero. Thai Life, an insurance company in Thailand, posted a video on YouTube that picked up 11 million views. “Unsung Hero” showed someone performing random acts of kindness: watering a plant; lending a hand; giving money to a needy child. The story the video told appeared to have little direct connection with insurance but it broadcast a positive message that insurance companies often struggle to communicate: that taking responsibility now delivers rewards in the future. It also made people feel good, won the kind of engagement and interest that insurance companies rarely achieve and showed how video content as part of an overall content strategy can combine good storytelling and interaction to deliver real results.

More companies will feel the benefits of that video content. Mark Zuckerberg has already made clear that he sees video content as the future of Facebook and has put organic reach where his mouth is. His company’s News Feed algorithm already rewards video content with extra views, motivating companies to break out the storyboards and the video cameras.

And content marketers now understand the kind of online video content that’s most likely to reap the rewards of that reach whether it’s posted on a social media site, a corporate website or a company intranet. When a video focuses on storytelling, on emotional impact and on user experience, people watch it, share it and engage with it.

If the video content is created as part of an overall content strategy, the message the company wants to broadcast becomes clear.  Wherever the company speaks, it has one voice and one message that attracts the attention of audiences.

Be A Content Marketing Hero

At the same time that video content is both becoming more important and more effective, technology is also giving content marketers broader options to enhance that effectiveness even more. Audiences no longer need to just sit and watch, and content marketers can do more than offer stories that motivate them to do so. We can now bring audiences into the action, offering them choices that change the narrative and reveal their preferences. We can personalize content, right down to the level of individual viewers so that the stories we offer have both mass appeal to the persona we’re targeting and individual empathy with touch points that reach individual concerns.

Video content is changing. This is no longer the age of short clips with simple messages that interrupt content and have to battle to retain attention. It’s an age in which the story is as interesting as the format, the viewers get to create their own messages and businesses get to build content strategies that are engaging and effective.

Video content is set to continue to grow. Content platforms are paying for it, audiences are engaging with it and businesses are winning results from it. “Unsung Hero” didn’t come out of nowhere. It was part of a long-standing content strategy by Ogilvy Bangkok. When businesses work video content into their content strategy they can become marketing heroes too.

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